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Virtual Adviser's™ opinion
Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 4-door sedan body style within the same 'Luxury car' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (front for the Nissan and 4 x 4 in the case of the Honda). The first one has a Nissan-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 290hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 295hp engine designed by Honda.
SafetyThe fact that the Honda got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, puts it sky-high safety-wise, in my eyes at least. Still, apart from the official crash test results there are other things we need to be aware of. Both vehicles belong to the luxury car segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it?
ReliabilityManufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Honda does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the results of an independent reasearch, while our visitors describe reliability of Nissan with an average rating of 4.3, and models under the Honda badge with 4.7 out of 5. Unfortunatelly, I don't have enough insight that would allow me to comment in more details on the specific models level. Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Maxima rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.
Performance & Fuel economyNissan is undoubtly more agile, reaching 100km/h in 1.3 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at kilometers per hour, 250km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy the winner has to be Maxima, averaging around 10.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (26 mpg), in combined cycle. We can't ignore that 8% difference compared to Legend.
Verdict
Honda appears just a bit more reliable, although the difference is truly marginal. The most important thing when deciding between any two vehicles should always be safety, both passive and active. In my opinion, everything taken into account, Legend beats the other contender by far, making it the best choice without even considering other things. From there things take a different direction, with Nissan being considerably quicker, thus putting more smile on driver's face. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! At the end, as much as I'd like to give you a winner here, it's simply a pure tie if you ask me. In any case that's my personal view, built upon all the data available to me. What should decide here though is the way you feel about the two vehicles, and I hope you'll find my guidelines useful in the process. In case you have two minutes to spare I invite you to define your needs, desires and budget and see which car would be chosen by the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.